Freefall Summer

by Tracy Barrett

  Tears spilled out of my eyes as I tried to smile at him. He squeezed my hand and then tactfully turned away to adjust a chest strap that didn’t need adjusting. Someone closed the door of the Caravan, and the noise level dropped. We took off, and I stared out the window and watched the hangar, the other planes, the trailer, and everything else get small. The small, fluffy clouds below us looked solid, like I could step out of the open door and onto one and bounce on it like a big mattress.

  Norton took us to altitude pretty fast, and two of the Geezers climbed out the door and clung to the outside of the plane, the legs of their jumpsuits flapping. The other two joined them inside the doorway and they chorused, “One, two, three” and bombed out, the four of them falling together. I leaned out the door and watched them form a flake and then a star, and then I couldn’t see them anymore as we droned on. Not bad for old guys.

  Denny and Louisa were right behind them, Louisa holding on tight to Denny’s rig so they’d be snug up against each other in freefall. Denny looked back at me and gave me a thumbs-up and a grin, and then they were gone. I lay on my belly and watched through the door as they fell beautifully flat and stable. Denny did his practice pull just right, and Louisa made an “okay” sign. She started to track away, and I lost sight of them. Denny would pull as soon as Louisa was clear. I wondered if he savored those few seconds alone or if he couldn’t wait to get a canopy over him.

  Norton’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Now that it’s just us, want to have some fun?”

  I gave him a thumbs-up, and he started playing, heading for clouds and yelling, “Bam!” as soon as we entered them, following holes in the clouds until they petered out. It was like a roller-coaster ride. I wondered what it felt like to be in freefall and not in a plane when you hit a cloud. You aren’t supposed to jump into clouds because you lose sight of the ground, but some people don’t follow those rules very carefully. Anyway, in Missouri clouds can roll in really fast even if you’re trying to avoid them. Everyone said that falling through a cloud was like being in heavy fog. Once, Randy had talked about entering one when it started to rain. He was descending at the same speed as the raindrops, and even Randy sounded poetic as he described feeling as though he had stopped falling and was surrounded by little dancing globes.

  My mom was still alive when my dad bought the Caravan. We all drove to Little Rock—my parents in the front seat, me and Norton in the back. It was the first time I’d ridden in a car without being in a car seat, and the seat belt seemed flimsy. I felt like I was going to slide off onto the floor. Norton didn’t say anything to me, but while he and my dad told stories about their days in Iraq until my mom begged them to stop, he held my hand in a firm grip that told me I was okay. He didn’t let go until we got to the small airport where the Caravan was waiting.

  After Norton had inspected the plane and my dad had paid the owner, Norton climbed in to fly it home to Missouri. I pitched such a fit about driving back without him that my dad signaled him to stop, and he lifted me up and put me in the plane. We got back to the Knoxton DZ about two hours before my parents, and by the time they arrived, I was so stuffed with candy and soda that I threw up on the way home. Norton still teases me about it sometimes.

  We landed. “Thanks!” I called to Norton as I climbed down. I stood aside as the students got in, resisting the urge to say, “Whomp!” I didn’t know whether it was watching the jumps or Norton’s joyride at the end that had left me feeling so up.

  I shrugged my rig off. The hangar was empty except for Ripstop. I scooped him up and kissed the side of his face while he squirmed and finally nipped my nose. I dropped him and he bounced out, holding his tail high in indignation.

  Voices drifted in from the landing area, and when I looked out I saw that Denny had landed. From the way he was being high-fived, I guessed he had nailed the landing. Soon he came in and undid his straps. He handed the rig to me.

  “How was it?”

  “Awe-some.” He split up the two syllables for emphasis. “It really was. I can’t wait to go out alone.”

  “Aren’t you even a little scared?”

  “I’m a lot scared. But knowing the awesomeness is coming is bigger than the fear. And I guess the fear is even part of the awesomeness, you know?”

  “Well, no, I don’t.”

  “Trust me.”

  I tossed his rig on the table and spread out the canopy, smoothing the fabric methodically. It was like a tranquilizer, the familiar repeated motions of flaking the cells, pulling the slider up, and then folding, straightening out, and stowing the lines. It kept me from having to answer Denny too.

  When I looked up he was watching me. “Going up again later?” I asked.

  “If there’s time. There are a lot of students ahead of me. You going for another observer ride?”

  I shook my head. “I hardly ever do. Only when the plane isn’t full, so I’m not taking the place of a paying customer.” I closed the pack, making sure it was all nice and tight. I hung it on the wall and turned to see Denny still there. He looked like he wanted to say something.

  “What?” I asked, even though I could guess what he was going to say, and sure enough, he asked, “So really—why is it you don’t jump?”

  I looked at him as I chewed the inside of my cheek. I started to speak, stopped, and then blurted, “Did you google the accident, the one I told you about that happened here ten years ago?” My breath came fast and my face turned hot. I’d told myself that I wanted to be the one to tell someone, and Denny was becoming important to me—no, it was just that he was so easy to talk to. That’s why I was saying this, I told myself. But it was harder than I’d thought.

  He looked embarrassed. “Sure. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Did you see the name of the person in the accident?”

  “No, I just skimmed it. Didn’t want to freak myself out of jumping again.”

  “So you didn’t see that she was married to the owner of the drop zone? And that her name was Jenna Clancy?” I waited, my heart pounding, while he looked puzzled.

  Comprehension dawned. “Shit—that was your mother?”

  I nodded. “She—” I cleared my throat.

  Denny just looked at me, not urging me to speak, not telling me I didn’t have to say anything, neutral. I almost said I didn’t want to talk about it, but then the words came tumbling out of my mouth. “It’s because of my mom that I—well, really, I don’t know how I feel about it. She loved it, so maybe I would too. But it killed her, and maybe it would kill me too. Anyway, my dad doesn’t want me to. After my mom went in—” My throat closed, and I looked at him bleakly.

  “Oh shit, Clancy.” More silence. Then, “Were you there?”

  I nodded and took a deep breath. I’d never had to tell anybody what had happened, not really, except Dr. Mike. “I wasn’t feeling well, and I was crying for my mom to take me home. She said she had to make one more jump with her team before a meet the next weekend. I knew how important meets were, but I was coming down with the flu, even though nobody knew it yet, and I kept whining until she finally said, ‘Just one more, Carys, and that will be all. Just one more jump.’ Of course, she meant one more jump that day, but as it turned out…Anyway, she tried to kiss me and I wouldn’t let her, so she left and I never saw her again.”

  “Did you see it happen?” His voice was soft, and I liked that he didn’t tell me that it didn’t matter, that I was a sick little kid, that he was sure my mom knew I loved her, the way Dr. Mike had said. I already knew all that, and it didn’t make me feel better.

  “I was inside,” I said. “In the lounge, you know, that room behind the office?” I could still picture it, the way it had looked then, with the old gold-and-green Goodwill couch, the TV where I watched fuzzy cartoons, my dad’s skydiving trophies on a low table, and the nasty indoor-outdoor carpeting with stains from coffee and who knew what else all over it.

  I realized I was staring into space.

  “Isn’t it sad for y
ou to spend every weekend here, where it happened?” Denny asked.

  I shook my head. “I like being at the DZ. My mom was so happy here—she wasn’t the kind of mom who had fun shopping or hanging out with her girlfriends or anything. She never even really seemed like herself when we were home. I mean, I know she liked being with me, but I could tell that when she did regular mom stuff with me, like playing dress-up and decorating cupcakes, she was pretty bored. When we were here…” I let my voice trail off, remembering how her face lit up and her voice got louder whenever we were at the DZ. One night there was a bonfire with music. I sat on my mom’s lap, and when she laughed at the stories, I bounced up and down. That was the weekend before she died.

  Denny looked unconvinced.

  “Anyway, it’s not like that for jumpers. I don’t think of the DZ as a place of death or anything. Like, if your mom died in your house, it probably wouldn’t make you never want to go home again, right? Because it’s also where you had Christmas—”

  “Hanukkah.”

  “And played with your cat—”

  “Dog.”

  “Denny!” He made me laugh with frustration, which was probably his intention. “You know what I’m saying. I played with Barbies on this same packing table. And once, on the Fourth of July, Norton flew us from here to the city, where we saw the fireworks from above, which was as awesome as it sounds, and I used to do my homework on Cynthia’s computer. When I was really little, I played “manifest” and booked jumps on my toy phone. And we came right back out here after my mom’s funeral. My dad couldn’t afford not to. So it seems like a natural place to hang out. Plus, like I said, I didn’t actually see my mother go in.”

  “That’s good. God, that sounds stupid.”

  “No, you’re right, it is good. But my dad saw it, and I couldn’t do that to him—have him see it twice. So that’s why I don’t know if I’ll ever make a jump.”

  That wasn’t the only reason, though. I didn’t know how to explain to Denny, without being melodramatic about it, that the same thing that scared the pants off me also drew me to it, like a horror-movie monster that makes the heroine follow it into a trap, even though the whole audience is shouting at her not to do it.

  I tossed a rig onto the table and straightened the lines while I waited for Denny to say something about my mother having a six-year-old daughter ten years ago, making me only sixteen. He didn’t. Either he had really only skimmed the article, like he’d said, or he hadn’t noticed that, or he thought that the reporter had gotten it wrong.

  Cynthia called a load. “That’s me!” Denny said.

  “Have fun,” I said automatically.

  “I’ll do my best,” he answered, and then he was out the door.

  My phone rang. Theo, finally! I walked outside. “Hello?”

  “Hi, sweetheart,” Theo said. I loved when he called me that; it was so old-fashioned and romantic.

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “I had to come into town to pick up a climbing rope. I don’t have much time to talk, but I wanted to tell you I miss you and that the camp posted some pictures on their website. I think I’m in some of them.”

  “How is it?”

  He went on for a while about how great the camp was and how beautiful Idaho was and how much he liked the other counselors. He said that most of the kids were great too, except for a few who were homesick and one who ignored the safety briefings, so they were going to have to scare her for her own good. I wondered whether he was ever going to ask how I was doing.

  He finally slowed down and asked after my dad. “Fine,” I said. “He’s been seeing more of that Elise woman, I think.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I could tell he wasn’t paying attention. “Theo, you there?”

  “Yeah, right here. How’s your summer going?”

  I should’ve probably said something about Denny, but somehow I didn’t want to. “Good. My dad’s paying me by the hour now instead of by the pack job, and I’m running some errands in the car. And Angie was here, but she’s gone back to New Mexico. Jackson did a tandem a little while ago.”

  He didn’t answer, and once again I said, “You there? Theo?” Why couldn’t he focus on our conversation?

  Then he was back. “Sorry—someone asked me a question.”

  “Where are you? I thought you were in some sport-supply place getting rope or whatever.”

  “Some of the other counselors came too,” he added, and then obviously not to me he said, “Just a sec.” Then he came back. “Sorry, Clancy, I have to deal with this.”

  “Thanks for calling. I’ll check out those photos,” I said.

  “I miss you.”

  “Miss you too. I love you.”

  “Love you too. Bye.”

  Then he was gone. I glanced in the hangar but Denny hadn’t come back yet. I sighed. Great. After the way Theo had acted all distracted and busy, I almost wished I had ignored my phone and kept talking with Denny. He was going to be a good shrink one day. He was making me think about things I was happier avoiding but that I should probably have been thinking about.

  Enough about Denny, I scolded myself.

  The PA crackled, and Cynthia’s voice said, “Clancy to the office.”

  Good. Something to do. When I got there, Cynthia stood up stiffly and stretched. “You got a few minutes to mind the phones for me?” she asked. “There’s room on the next load and if I don’t do a jump soon I’m going to lose my mind.”

  “Heaven forfend,” I said as I took her seat and she grabbed her rig off the hook behind the door.

  The phone rang a lot while she was gone. I set up a tandem jump for the next weekend with a nervous whuffo who wanted a lot of details and statistics about safety. I had worked the phones and even the manifest a lot of times, and I understood Cynthia’s abbreviations and special notes, so I entered the information on her spreadsheet.

  Scheduling jump students is more complicated than it looks, partly because fun jumpers usually show up without making appointments. If they don’t get to jump at Knoxton, they’re likely to take their business over to the Jump Ranch, even if it does have kind of a shady reputation. So my dad has to make sure there are enough pilots to fly the students, plus at least one more for the fun jumpers. But if the students don’t show up—students chicken out all the time—and my dad has arranged for more pilots and planes, he still has to pay the pilots, even if they don’t fly.

  So Cynthia had to keep an eye on numbers, and when it looked like things were going to be really busy, my dad would hire someone with a Twin Otter or a King Air or another jump plane. Once, a DC-3 was going across the country, stopping at DZs here and there, and it stayed at Knoxton for two weeks. So many people came that even Raymond, the owner of the Jump Ranch, finally gave up and closed down for the weekend. He came out himself and made some jumps. I’d heard so many bad things about the Jump Ranch that I was surprised when he seemed like a regular jumper and not some evil being.

  When the phone finally fell silent, I thought I should look at Theo’s camp photos. That would make me miss him and stop feeling annoyed with him.

  The landscape in Idaho was totally different from that of Missouri, with mountains and cliffs, and even the trees looked different. Darker, I guessed. The camp itself looked pretty standard, with log cabins clustered around a flagpole, and there were lots of pictures of kids mugging for the camera and paddling canoes.

  There was a photo of two people climbing a cliff face, taken from way below. I recognized Theo instantly; he always looked like a spider when he climbed, with his long arms and legs reaching holds that no one else could get to. The other climber was a girl. The next shot was of them at the top of the cliff, arms around each other, smiling and holding their fists in the air in triumph. I leaned closer to the screen. The girl’s name was Ali, according to the caption, and she was cute—short, with a brown ponytail and freckles. She looked athletic and muscular, and she had a wide grin.

&
nbsp; It was about time for Cynthia’s jump, so I closed the site and put the phone on voice mail, and stepped outside with the binoculars. She was always fun to watch.

  Cynthia had gone to college on an acrobatics scholarship and did amazing things in freefall. As I watched, she went head-down and rotated like a propeller, and then did some backflips and some other moves that I couldn’t imagine doing on a mat in a gym, much less while falling through the sky.

  She stood up the landing, took off her rig, and did a cartwheel. The students watching burst into applause and she bowed with a flourish. I went back inside and checked the voice mails while Cynthia packed her rig. When she came back I said, “Amazing!”

  “Thanks.” She slung her rig on its hook.

  Even though Cynthia’s jump had been awesome, it wasn’t enough to distract me from the picture of Theo. Why was he hugging that girl? Okay, maybe they were celebrating a hard climb or something, but the way she was leaning into him and he was squeezing her looked…too cozy somehow. I told myself to quit being paranoid.

  A commotion arose out in the landing area: someone calling my dad, loud voices, running feet. Cynthia and I looked at each other, frozen for an instant. The sound meant only one thing: a jumper was in trouble.

  Cynthia and I ran out together, ignoring the ringing phone. My dad stood in the field next to Noel, shading his eyes from the sun and talking into the headset. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he sounded firm and calm. Louisa and Randy were standing next to each other, holding their bunched-up canopies. Other people looked up, pointing and speaking in low tones. The sky held only one jumper under canopy. At first I didn’t see anything wrong, but then I realized that for some reason the jumper wasn’t turning to face into the wind. It had to be a student.

  He was going pretty fast. At this rate, whoever it was would wind up in the next county—if he was lucky. There were a lot of power lines in the direction he was heading, and that could mean big trouble. Parachutes are really steerable, but students don’t usually have the hang of it.